Design at Duke Street No.1: David Pearson

In collaboration with Andy Campbell at NUCA (and with a little help from our friends) Studio had been planning this since the Summer – inviting book designer David Pearson to the Norwich University College of the Arts to give a lecture on his valuable work for Penguin and beyond.

And like a much desired Routemaster - we also had the treat of another design luminary, visiting the Duke Street lecture theatre on the same day – the design critic Alice Rawstorn (more on Alice's lecture in a bit). So with great anticipation, Andy and I had our very own design festival (with better catering and no portaloo's).

David learnt his typographic craft under the watchful eye of Phil Baines at Central St.Martin's, which soon earned him an exciting work placement at Penguin Books. And here is where David's talk began, with an image of Penguin's archive – endless rows of every book it ever published. The holy grail is probably buried somewhere here, not that would interest David – he was too busy archive raiding and consuming Penguin's rampant design invention.



And if you love paperback books, but more importantly judge a book by its cover, you'll be familiar with Penguin's commitment to producing challenging book cover designs which inspire new generations of readers. Even the most casual observer could re-collect the classic characteristics of a Penguin paperback – the iconic parallel orange bars, the bold black san-serif typeface and the curious symbol of the Penguin standing to attention, but distracted by something over his right shoulder.

Penguin began in 1933 by founder Allen Lane, who knew the importance of publishing good writing for the masses but also the value of it's book jacket, stating "I have never been able to understand why cheap books should not be well designed – for good design is no more expensive than bad". And Penguin attracted many great designers – Jan Tschichold practising his new typography in the late 1940's, produced a whopping 500 book designs in three years. In keeping with post-war austerity, his design method relished the challenge of working within limitations such as using black and one other colour and consistent positioning of title, author's name and that distracted Penguin motif. Later, if there was a famous author, perhaps one more colour could be added to the palette.

Influenced by US sales figures and their extravagant full colour front covers, Penguin flirted with imagery too. Coming to life in the 1970's with the design work of David Pelham – this lucky chap actually used photography which would have alarmed Allen Lane and his accountant.



You can appreciate, when David began at Penguin he was following in the foot steps of some design greats. But his work soon had a lasting feel of quality – classic typography but still mixing modern styles, which are explored in his 'Great Ideas' series. Complimentary illustration pops up in the 'Great Journeys' series, but you can imagine Penguin's founder wincing at the sight of the many colours applied throughout the collection. I love the 'Penguin Classics' range (£2 each - buy them while you can) which celebrates consistent copy positioning and colour restriction. You can sense Mr Tschichold nodding with approval.



It was a pleasure meeting David and seeing not only his inspirational work but the timeless legacy of Penguin Books. Just imagine those dusty volumes at rest in the Penguin archive – I'd love to explore it one day. Before I sign-off I feel a tangent coming on – I must apologise if David was distracted by some idle student chatter from the back row – they obviously know it all. But being a Seinfeld obsessive I was reminded by this scene and how to silence disruptors at the cinema. We could have used George Constanza at David's talk. But then, maybe not.

Find more of David Pearson's work here.

With thanks to Matty and Jason Hyde X